Assorted World of Warcraft Goodness

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By Andrew Burnes

Part two of GameSpy's extended look at World of Warcraft is online, so here's a clip:

Finally, an hour into our discussion, Kaplan moved out of the way and said those magic words, "Are you ready to play?" I believe I broke a land speed record getting my butt into the chair, as did our own Managing Editor, John Keefer - better known as Warrior. Kaplan restarted the game with a new account and walked me through the character set up process. At this writing, the team is currently stress testing the undead, loading the servers with up to 400 players using undead content at the same time. So far, according to Kaplan, the test has gone remarkably well from both a stability and gameplay point of view.

That, however, meant that I would only be able to create an undead character. That was no problem for me, as it was what I would have picked regardless. I clicked my way through the character selection screen, eventually settling on an undead mage named (what else?) "Delsyn." The game's character selection screen allows some level of customization. Players can choose hair and skin colors, hair (or horn) styles, and can select from a large number of different faces. This was actually rather disappointing. I told Kaplan that I felt like there just weren't enough character customization options; at the least, I should be able to tweak the design of my face. Kaplan said that that was the most common complaint about the game so far and the team was looking into adding new features.

On the RipNet forums there are some various questions and answers regarding the game:

What countries will be included in the beta?

The countries included in the beta test will be: Canada, Korea & the United States. Sorry to all the other countries out there, we just don't have the server support up at this time.

Will people with dial-up modems be able to participate in the beta or just those with broadband?

Both broadband & dial-up modem users will be admitted into the test.

How are beta testers selected?

We have plans to give many beta tests away via contests (I hope to have more information on this next week). All other beta testers will be selected randomly from the applicant database.